Economic and Social Council: Meetings Coverage

Societies must be willing to examine the underlying causes of gender-based violence, the systems that facilitated it and the factors that exacerbated it, in particular, armed conflict, HIV/AIDS and poverty, senior Government officials stressed as the Commission on the Status of Women moved into the third day of its fifty-seventh annual session.

As the recent “horrific” abuse of women in India and around the world had laid bare, it was not a lack of normative or legal frameworks — but rather their effective implementation — that impeded efforts to combat such violence and end the culture of impunity that protected perpetrators, senior Government officials said today, as the Commission on the Status of Women moved into day two of its general debate.

With the scourge of violence against women and girls still rampant around the world, the international community must “rise to the occasion” and lay out concrete plans to tackle that long-standing, deeply entrenched crisis, stressed high-level speakers as the Commission on the Status of Women opened its historic fifty-seventh session today.

Convening in a brief organizational session this afternoon, the Economic and Social Council decided on the division of responsibilities among its President, Néstor Osorio (Colombia), and four of its Vice-Presidents to Chair the various segments of its 2013 substantive session, to be held in July.

The Economic and Social Council concluded the first part of its 2013 organizational session today, adopting seven draft decisions that detailed much of its agenda for the year, and outlined the arrangements for the body’s substantive session, set to open on 1 July, at the United Nations Office at Geneva.

Calling strongly for concrete policy actions and targeted investments to enhance food security and scale up nutrition, top officials from the Economic and Social Council and the General Assembly’s Second Committee (Economic and Financial) stressed today that “hope, focus, pragmatism and determination” — bolstered by deeper cooperation — were crucial to ending hunger, a global challenge that was “eminently solvable”.

Meeting briefly today, the Commission for Social Development took up a number of issues that would set the tone for its upcoming work and, more broadly, allow it to engage in more relevant ways within the United Nations system, especially the Economic and Social Council, whose principal role in the follow-up to major United Nations meetings was elevated by the landmark 2012 Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development.

With an estimated 75 million young people out of work around the world — nearly one in four in some parts — rapid action was needed to stimulate job creation, give young people and other excluded groups a voice in decision-making and institute schemes for social protection floors, the Commission for Social Development heard today as it continued its fifty-first session.

Seizing the “strategic and unique” opportunities before the Economic and Social Council could make 2013 an “historic year” for the body, its President said today as he called on delegations to work together on a results-oriented agenda that would both strengthen the Council and enhance its contribution to United Nations-backed sustainable development processes now getting under way.